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(1) Writing kanji and kana in Roman script. There are several conventions here, none of which has been universally accepted. By personal preference, except for katakana words like 'messeeji' (message) 'boodo' (board), I prefer the Hepburn system, since it is closest to English. But Hepburn is no good with long vowels, for example.

(2) The most interesting and difficult part of writing Japanese is getting from simple "This is a pen" type sentences to writing 'real' Japanese, which approximates to what a native speaker would write and my own offerings should not be taken as a benchmark here. In my university, there are officials who check my written Japanese and you would be surprised at how much they change.

(3) In the first paragraph the subject is 'koto' and it governs a whole string of subordinate phrases / clauses. I would translate it as, "I am very pleased at the fact that more people are participating in this part of the AikiWeb bulletin board where people can study Japanese."

(4) Minasan ni okiki shitai no wa: honorific from of kiku (to ask). No softens the question, as does 'no ka' at the end. These grammatical notes were written, by the way, in response to a request from Andrew Grochowski, who started this thread. I have no idea how brief or how detailed to make them, so I await guidance.

(5) Actually the question I posed in this post is an important question. I am fortunate to use a computer where the OS and all the software is Japanese. I have no experience whatever in writing Japanese in other ways and so I am curious about what other posters do living outside Japan. I ask this because occasionally there are mistakes in inputting hiragana and this completely affects the meaning. With Japanese language software the possibility of such mistakes is minimized because the software itself contains a built-in spell-check and grammar check. The problem with such software is that kanji also appears and if you do not know many characters mistakes can easily be made, but as a rule of thumb the more kanji the better. On my own computer, pressing the 'delete' key brings back the hiragana.

(6) Finally, as in the dojo, you learn to write Japanese by actually practicing, so I would urge everyone who posts here to write at least something in Japanese, even if it is in hiragana / katakana.

Do desu ka? There, that's the only japanese phrase I know, I'm trying to learn it, and hoping to pick up a japanese language program for my computer since it isn't offered at school once I find a job this summer. I've seen a few things online, and my sister bought me an English to Japanese dictionary that I read through at random intervals, any assistance and resource referances you may give me will be well apreciated,